Officials introduced new plans to combat human trafficking in response to the U.S.’s decision to drop Cambodia to the lowest ranking in anti-trafficking efforts, in a meeting chaired by Interior Minister Sar Kheng.
A first-of-its-kind, 10-year study tracking the lives of 128 Cambodian sex trafficking survivors reveals frequent shock and re-exploitation as they try to reintegrate into the community, and fears and intimidation while navigating the justice system, according to a series of research reports published this week.
A 21-year-old woman says she feels like a “newborn” after arriving home to Phnom Penh last week, rescued from China alongside nine other sex-trafficking victims. The woman was 17 when she left Cambodia hoping for a good job, but became entrapped in years of abuse.
A Cambodian woman who was rescued in China after posting on Facebook about her two years as a sex trafficking victim might not be allowed to return home till March, her mother said she was told, though authorities denied there was a fixed date.
In a voice message, a 14-year-old girl said she was pregnant after four months of abuse by her Chinese “husband,” and was now stuck at a Chinese police station for three weeks hoping Cambodian authorities would bring her home.
Authorities in Vietnam have reported more trafficking victims crossing from Cambodia, the Interior Ministry’s counter-trafficking chief said, as the global economic slowdown creates a desperation for jobs while closed borders due to Covid-19 elevate the dangers of migration.
She was 17 when she left her hometown in Kratie for a “good job” in China. Two and a half years later, on Saturday, she was able to post a message online. “They’ve forced me to take husbands here. They said if I don’t take them as husbands, they would sell me to a brothel.”
A woman who protested the detention of her husband, who was jailed in relation to his work on a child sex trafficking documentary that officials called fiction, said Tuesday that she had fled the country and has applied for U.N. refugee status after Cambodian authorities threatened her with arrest.
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